Red Letter Day
by D-Watson
Summary: Lyle. Neil. Setsuna. A quiet moment at the cemetery.


**Summary:** Lyle. Neil. Setsuna. A quiet moment at the cemetery.

**Gundam** **00** © Sunrise

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It occurred to Lyle that it always seemed to be raining cats and dogs every time he decided to visit the cemetery. It was such a terribly beaten cliché that he almost found it amusing. Umbrella in one hand and a stack of fresh flowers in the other, he paced the muddy paths with a measured step, keen eyes trying to make out shapes in the gathering gloom. He used to know every bump and hollow in the road like the back of his hand, but as time went by, Lyle found he no longer visited the graveyard often enough to be able to navigate it as quickly and effectively as he used to. He supposed it was just as well. There was a time when he believed the sadness he felt in his everyday life would never come to pass. But day by day, he drifted further and further away from it until he realized he didn't feel the need to dwell with the dead anymore. It was a textbook example of all the stages in the process of grieving.

As he neared the familiar patch of land where his family had been laid to rest, he wondered how many more visits he would be able to make before his own name got engraved into that stone beneath the worn Celtic cross. Lyle did not want to die, but he was well aware that his involvement with Celestial Being, as well as Katharon, meant his chances of ending up dead and drifting somewhere in space, just like the brother he replaced, were a lot higher than he was comfortable with. He wondered if anyone would visit the grave then. He had no family or love interest, not many friends, save for those he would rather call reluctant allies. With all his jovial nature, he had to admit that the thought of an entire family being wiped away like that with no one left to remember them was more than a little sad.

As if in response to his silent contemplation, Lyle spotted a solitary figure in the distance, poised over his family's grave, with raven black hair soaked hopelessly into a curtain draping all but half of his face. It was enough to make him do a double take and wonder if perhaps he somehow stumbled into the wrong end of the cemetery. As he approached close enough for the scene to shift into focus, he recognized the figure as none other than Setsuna F. Seiei. From the look of things, the young man seemed to have been standing there for quite some time, a single white rose limply lingering in his right hand.

The pouring rain all but swallowed Lyle's footsteps, but alert as Setsuna always was, the faint sound of someone approaching instantly snapped him out of his reverie. If he was going to issue a greeting of some sort, Lyle did not give him the chance.

"Jesus, man, you're soaked," the sniper said, debating whether to offer his colleague shelter under the umbrella, for all the good that would do. Deciding that the younger man probably wouldn't appreciate such a meaningless gesture, he settled a few steps to his left, displaying a generous respect of Setsuna's stoic sense of personal space. "How long have you been standing here?"

"For a while," the other replied, without any of his usual precision. "I was just getting ready to leave, actually."

It wasn't so much that Setsuna was the last person Lyle expected to find there; from what little the young pilot spoke of his brother when they first met, he could sense a tinge of personal loss. It was just that finding anyone at all was highly unordinary, if not completely unexpected.

Highly unordinary. He supposed he still wasn't quite used to the idea that Neil was no longer alive, still wouldn't be surprised to find flowers on the grave and wonder when his brother had made the visit. After all, they hadn't seen or spoken to each other in years. Neil's death simply could not have affected his life as profoundly and directly as the deaths of his parents and sister did.

Lyle placed the flowers at the foot of the tombstone with a tenderness that carried a sense of respect for the deceased and turned his attention back on Setsuna. He wasn't the sort of man who ever had, or particularly enjoyed company when he visited this place, but as long as someone was there, he figured, he might as well acknowledge their presence.

"You startled me," he said in a friendly manner, so as not to make the other visitor feel unwelcome. "I'm not used to finding someone here."

"I don't come often," Setsuna offered. "I've only been here once before," he added, as if he felt the need to explain himself for intruding.

"Is that so? Well, I try and come at least once a year," the Irishman blurted out in a very Lyle-like attempt to make conversation where it wasn't really warranted.

"When I was younger, I used to come here almost ever day," he added, to which Setsuna turned to look at him with something resembling a curious eye. Lyle momentarily felt silly for sharing personal information with a man he didn't even know beyond their all too constricting workplace, but he carried on just the same. It had been so damn long since he mentioned his family to anyone, it almost felt liberating.

"I never talked to them or anything like that. I guess I just needed a reminder that they weren't coming back."

Setsuna made no comment, but Lyle was certain that, even if he wasn't eager to take part in the conversation, the young man was at least not adverse to hearing him out. He decided to use this rare opportunity to prod a little further into the mind of the mysterious man-child who all but assumed command of Celestial Being with his quiet resolve and inherited will.

"You know, don't take this the wrong way, but I wouldn't have pegged you as the type who looks for comfort in cemeteries," he said.

"I don't come here for comfort," Setsuna replied flatly. "I also need to be reminded of something, Lyle Dylandy."

Being the casual person that he was, Lyle found the all-business tone the young Meister always seemed to stick to both cute and annoying. All on full name basis, all clear-cut points, no syllable more than absolutely necessary. But there he was, conducting a very uncharacteristic non-business visit, and that was enough for Lyle to revise his image of Setsuna somewhat.

"When Lockon Stratos died," he continued, "it was the first time someone's death caused me pain. I come here to remind myself that I don't ever want to feel that pain again."

It sounded like a legitimate enough reason, and one that was to be expected from a man like him. Setsuna did seem to have a fiercely protective attitude to his comrades, and knowing that his brother was the one who inspired it probably should have made Lyle feel proud, but it didn't.

"Is that why you fight?"

Setsuna considered the question for a moment before offering a reply. "Yes. Perhaps now, that's also part of my reason."

As a newcomer to the crew, Lyle was not privy to information about the personal lives of other Gundam Meisters, but he did know their unofficial leader was a child soldier in Kurdis, and all that that could entail. Setsuna kept to himself, and it wasn't hard to deduce how he became that way. He had eyes that had seen a lot and a mouth that spoke very little, and Lyle had to wonder just how many people Setsuna had killed or watched die with that same vacant expression on his young face, before one of those deaths finally moved him. It was a sad thought to the mind of someone who had experienced a reasonably normal and happy childhood, however badly and abruptly that ended.

Despite the tragedy that tore his family apart, Lyle did not consider his lot in life a particularly sad one. He had regrets, yes, had his fair share of bad memories, but through it all, he decided that he had quite enough of death and suffering for one lifetime and proceeded to build a life for himself that wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, given the circumstances. It was an attitude he decided to play up when he joined Celestial Being.

Ever the chatty, easy-going Irishman, Lyle played his part of the wholesome civilian thrust in the midst of damaged goods to perfection. Never in low spirits, never bothered by the past, never least bit the caring big brother figure Neil was.

He supposed it was not the sort of behavior a genuinely good and honest person would be capable of, but it was the only way he knew how to assert himself. He could have firmly stated the fact that Lyle Dylandy was a person unto himself, completely independent of, and with no desire to be like the man he replaced, but the truth of the matter was that even if he could convince everyone else, _he_ would still know it was a lie. And so he acted every bit the bastard son some of his colleagues came to regard him as until they stopped looking like they've seen a ghost every time he entered their line of sight. If someone wanted to argue that he stumbled into the big leagues just because someone so much better than him died, "Lockon Stratos" did nothing to dissuade them – they may very well have been right.

Lyle was the sort of man who desperately tried to come across as confident and quietly patched his wounded integrity behind closed doors. Against his better judgment, against his own moral code, he still held a man who had led a sorrowful, vengeful existence on a holy pedestal, and he didn't know just how much of that was Neil's fault and how much was his own. But his brother always seemed to excel at everything he did, it was almost impossible to believe such disparity in abilities could exist between two people who shared an identical genetic makeup. Lyle used to joke that his incompetence in the face of his big brother was one of nature's great mysteries, even though he never found it remotely funny.

Sometimes, he was convinced that Neil was not a good _person_; that he was just a person who was good at _things_. Lyle wondered if perhaps, even the members of Celestial Being that grieved for the great Lockon Stratos the most never thought to define exactly what he did to deserve a red letter day in their personal calendar. It was just so Neil to charm his way into sainthood like that.

"Tell me, Setsuna, what did my brother do to leave such a huge hole behind him?"

"He was Lockon Stratos," the other pilot replied plainly, as if that was somehow supposed to explain everything. Lyle let out a mirthless chuckle; in retrospect, he hadn't really expected anything more eloquent from the enigmatic Setsuna.

"The man who could snipe you from the other side of the stratosphere, right? I'm sorry I'm not quite that good."

"No, that's not it," Setsuna corrected, not missing a beat. "He was the one that taught us to stick together," he said, turning to regard the tombstone once again, as if it was somehow disrespectful not to be looking in whatever direction Neil was supposedly in when talking about him. His features remained firmly set in their mask of stoic defiance, but there was a subtle hint of grief and reverence in the younger Meister's eyes, and as far as emotions go, that was the most expressive Lyle had ever seen him.

"He taught us to stick together, not just as Gundam Meisters, but as people," Setsuna finally concluded. "I think we're all stronger now, because of him." And at that, he turned to look his comrade in the eye, as if to extend an unspoken invitation to join that circle of strength. Lyle's demeanor equally silently stated 'thanks, I think I'll pass,' but as loath as he was to admit it, the thought of Neil acting the Big Brother to a bunch of people he hardly even knew made his heart sink just a little.

"Yeah? You were lucky, then," he said through a smile, trying his damndest not to sound bitter.

From the look on his face, Lyle had the feeling the other man wouldn't call the disposition his brother's death left the Meisters in 'lucky,' but then again, Setsuna knew nothing of just how strange 'sticking together' sounded in the context of the Neil Dylandy he knew when he was growing up. If he were to be completely honest, he would have to admit Neil struggled to maintain an invisible presence in his life even after they had drifted apart, but there was only so much care and warmth a generous paycheck could extend to a teenaged boy growing up with no living relative in sight. It did nothing to alleviate his loneliness and everything to boost his sense of inferiority. And even in death, Neil's shadow hung over him like the rain clouds that always seemed to hang over the cemetery – thick, grey and inadvertently amplifying whatever sorrow lied beneath them. To a man who had spent most of his life trying to look to the future, it was the worst possible legacy.

"You know, I didn't like my brother very much," the Irishman finally admitted to the other. If the confession came as a surprise to Setsuna, he made no gesture to show it. Instead he continued to observe Lyle evenly as he fished for a pack of matches in his pocket. Lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag in one fluid motion, the older pilot's eyes absently landed on his family's tombstone.

"No… maybe it's just that I don't like myself," he added, as a surprisingly candid afterthought.

Ever the man of few words, Setsuna merely nodded in quiet recognition of Lyle's honesty before letting the flower he had been holding rest at the foot of the Dylandy family tombstone. Laying his hand briefly on the cold rock as a final parting gesture, he started down the same path he came, leaving Lockon Stratos in silent disarray, both living and dead.

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_A/N: This whole story started as something that was supposed to revolve around Neil a lot more than Lyle and Setsuna. I have no idea what happened, but it ended up being almost entirely about roaming through Lyle's head and showing Neil in a less than flattering light, which was not exactly my intention. I love Neil. Never was that crazy about Lyle, but I think writing this made me like him a whole lot more, as stupid as that may sound. _

_Rants, raves and plain old HAI THARs gratefully accepted in the reviews section._


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